The SitePoint Forums have moved.

You can now find them here.
This forum is now closed to new posts, but you can browse existing content.
You can find out more information about the move and how to open a new account (if necessary) here.
If you get stuck you can get support by emailing forums@sitepoint.com

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

A better way to display form fields

Please view the attachment and let me know if you know of a way to display these form fields better. In other words, so that the display area or display box is smaller while at the same time, users are still able to make multiple selections.

That's a useful tip, Gary. I tried it with Paul's example, and noticed that the size attribute only worked if the CSS height setting was removed. (A no-brainer, I guess, but perhaps still worth pointing out... for no-brainers like me.)

so that the display area or display box is smaller while at the same time, users are still able to make multiple selections.

Since no one has mentioned it, a select list like this will just be "one line tall" (so to speak), and the options will only appear when the user clicks on the list, if the select setting is changed from something like:

There's a problem setting a size or a CSS width on these dropdown selects...

in some browsers (notably IE) the width really will stay that width. Not only of the select itself but also the part that drops down. If your width is less than the longest item, the longest item gets cut off. You can't read it.

In FF and other browsers the drop-down box will be wide enough.

In a page where I needed to really limit the width of the dropdowns, but had very long names inside (country names), I ended up adding a title to the longest ones. This isn't really the best solution but it worked for the browsers who were hiding the text. Still doesn't help keyboarders though.